Kay Vess’ VA brought “heart” to the character through development of Star Wars Outlaws

Humberly Gonzalez, the actor for Kay Vess, talked about her involvement in the creation of this scoundrel protagonist in the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws.

Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, this Star Wars story puts the spotlight on Kay Vess, an up-and-coming scoundrel ready to take the planets by storm with her creature companion Nix helping her along the way.

While players may compare Kay to other well-known smugglers of the galaxy such as Han Solo, Gonzalez spoke about her hopes of making Kay’s story something more unique in comparison to what Star Wars fans have already seen on the big screen.

“You’ve seen scoundrel stories in this galaxy before like Han Solo, Lando, but we haven’t seen a story of a normal girl, who has a dream where she just wants to be free. There’s a lot of themes of freedom, and she has this resilience and fearlessness, but she’s also a rookie so she makes a lot of mistakes.”

Ubisoft

Everyone in the room listening to Gonzalez speak could see the light in her eyes when talking about what Kay meant to her as a character. The care and thought that this Venezuelan actor put into performing was evident as she explained the less-confident side of this character.

“[Y]ou get to see this chip on her shoulder, this vulnerable side to her that we don’t see a lot in these very confident scoundrels we’ve already captured in Star Wars. So I really wanted to make her that complex, that you can be…yes, fearless, but also shake in your boots.”

Attendees got a glimpse of a raw motion-capture scene where Kay’s ship was failing to make a solid landing on a planet. Gonzalez’s portrayal jumped off the screen as Kay’s confidence whittled while as her ship headed for a crash.

Ubisoft

Khavari previously mentioned the team’s eagerness to write about a story of an outlaw right from getting the call from Lucasfilm that Ubisoft would get the chance to make a Star Wars game.

Although Kay has that typical scoundrel personality, Narrative Director Navid Khavari mentioned just how different the character was in the early stages of development, before Gonzalez was brought on board.

“Before Humberly joined, we arrived on set–I think it was like the first shoot–we had written Kay very snarky, quippy, and I think as cynical writers, we maybe got a little excited about that.

“But then you took on the role, and you mentioned this, bringing heart to Kay. We had to go back and say wait a second, this needs to be someone we all relate to. And that became a really big theme of like, you know, she can make jokes, she can situationally react to things, but you know, we need to relate to this person, we want to spend time with this person.”

Ubisoft

Gonzalez also mentioned how great of an opportunity this role was for her to embody a main character in a Star Wars project. Specifically, a solo female protagonist without any male protagonist needing to be at her side. This was alongside the pride she felt representing the Venezuelan community:

“I’m just really proud to be a female protagonist, and immigrant, who learned English halfway through her life, who is from Venezuela, like I feel that’s such a huge representation … It’s incredible that they decided to not have a male counterpart, it’s one of the very first times I’ve seen anyone do that.”

Star Wars Outlaws releases on August 30, and if you’re excited to know more about what the game has to offer, we’ve already played four hours of this open-world which you can read up on.